Abstract
A major locus of contemporary phenomenological debate is the loosely termed “postmodern” phenomenology of religious experience, where a number of thinkers have taken up Heidegger’s approach to the divine in terms of the question of the “gift,” whose givenness is crucially distinct from the presence of intention, meaning, or concept.1 This leads to the denial of immediate intuition and consequently to a kind of “negative phenomenology,” which, some argue, should no longer be considered phenomenology at a11.2 This is also called the “phenomenology of the impossible,” in which the absence of God in traditional negative theology turns out to be the same as the overabundance of the Infinite and All-Powerful which overwhelms the human being in the instant or moment of the “time of the gift.”3 Here there may be, in the words of one observer, “some kind of vision,” but no objectification and neither presence nor absence as commonly understood.4
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Notes
See discussion in John D. Caputo, “Apostles of the Impossible: On God and the Gift in Derrida and Marion,” in God, the Gift,and Postmodernism, John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (eds.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, pp. 185–222.
See Dominique Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française“, Combas: Editions de l’Éclat, 1991, pp. 50 ff.
Caputo, p. 206.
Richard Kearney, “Desire of God,” in God, the Gift,and Postmodernism, p. 139, n. 43. Keamey characterizes this as “quasi-presence.”
See Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Heidegger und die Sprache,” Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 10, Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1987, p. 16. (Hereafter GW)
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Hermeneutik und ontologische Differenz,” GW 10, p. 58.
“In [all ancient religions of the Western tradition] the gods represented a realm of being `beyond’ the everyday, the sphere of the divine that could be approached by ever-new interpretations and illustrations of a poetic and `philosophical’ kind. The incontestable reality of religious experience was the presupposition of all this¡. As far as the revealed religions are concerned, the situation is quite different.” Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Aesthetic and Religious Experience,” in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, Nicholas Walker (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 147.
This definition is by Joachim Wach, quoted in the “Translator’s Note” to Walter F. Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult, Robert B. Palmer, trans., Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, 1981, p. 4.
l bid., 98.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Parmenides oder das Diesseits des Seins,” GW 7, p. 5.
Walter F. Otto, Dionysus, p. 19.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Socrates Frömmigkeit des Nichtwissens,” GW 7, p. 92.
The impression that Gadamer is uninterested in the cultic is furthered by a translation error in his autobiographical essay for the Library of Living Philosophers, which says that he felt a particular kinship with American Protestant theologians because “their philosophical interest was concentrated above all on the nature of the divine instead of on Greek religious cults.” Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Reflections on my Philosophical Journey,” Richard Palmer trans., in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer Lewis Edwin Hahn (ed.), Chicago: Open Court, 1997, p. 19. What Gadamer actually says is that he felt a particular connection with said theologians above all because of their philosophical interest in the Greek religious cults, with a particular focus on the question of God or of the divine: “Überdies fand man da meistens eine gute Kenntnis des Griechischen and der griechischen Kulturwelt, vor allem philosophisches Interesse gegenüber den griechischen religiösen Kulten, das auf die Gottesfrage, auf das <Göttliche>, konzentriert war.” The translation of gegenüber should be “vis-¨¤-vis” rather than “instead of.” Gadamer, “Mit der Sprache denken,” GW 10, p. 347.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Myth in the Age of Science,” in Religion,Hermeneutics, and Ethics, Joel Weinsheimer (trans.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 99–100. One should add, however, Gadamer’s caution that Otto’s interpretation is conditioned by his own historical situation, i.e., his twentieth-century neo-paganism, and should not be taken as simply correct. Gadamer, “Socrates’ Frömmigkeit des Nichtwissens,” p. 91.
Thus Aphrodite, to take one example, is the “ensnaring, heart-warming splendor,in which all things and the whole world stand before the eye of love, the rapture of propinquity and fusion into oneness, whose magic draws the contrast of limited creatures into boundless dissolution. It manifests itself as true divinity ranging from the natural up to the sublime heights of spirit.” Walter F. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, Moses Hadas (trans.), London: Thames & Hudson, 1954, p. 100. Gadamer points out that this representation of the whole of being holds not only for the Olympian gods, but the chthonic ones as well, specifically Dionysus. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Myth in the Age of Science,” in Hermeneutics, Religion,& Ethics, Joel Weinsheimer (trans.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, p. 100.
See for example Otto, Homeric Gods,p. 169.
Ibid., p. 79.
Ibid., p. 213.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Festive Character of the Theater,” in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, p. 175, n. 1.
Otto, Dionysus, p. 33. Here Otto explicitly criticizes Rudolf Otto’s “wholly other.”
Gadamer, “The Festive Character of the Theater,” p. 59.
Walter F. Otto points out that we cannot understand the force of the cultic among the ancients in light of the weakness of contemporary capabilities for emotion. Otto, Dionysus,p. 20.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Wort and Bild-->so wahr, so seiend<,” GW 10, p. 389.
Gadamer, “The Festive Character of the Theater,” p. 61.
One notes that Gadamer’s essay “The Festive Character of the Theater” was originally published in a Festschrift for Walter F. Otto.
Gadamer, “The Festive Character of the Theater,” p. 59; my paraphrase revises the translation slightly.
Otto, Dionysus, pp. 18–19.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Zur Phänomenologie von Rituel and Sprache,” GW 8, p. 421.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Hölderlin and George,” in Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education, Poetry, and History: Applied Hermeneutics, Lawrence Schmidt and Monica Reuss (trans.), Albany: SUNY Press, 1992, p. 101. Gadamer gives the example of Rudolf Steiner.
Gadamer, “Wort and Bild-->so wahr, so seiend<,” p. 389.
Ibid., p. 383.
See Ibid., p. 375.
Gadamer, “The Festive Character of the Theater,” p. 59.
Gadamer calls “tarrying” with the work of art “perhaps the only way that is granted to us finite beings to relate to what we call eternity.” Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Relevance of the Beautiful,” in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, p. 45.
Gadamer, “Wort and Bild-->so wahr, so seiend<,” p. 378.
Gadamer, “Aesthetic and Religious Experience,” p. 145.
See for example Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being,Thomas A. Carlson (trans.), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991, p. 16 f.
Gadamer, “The Greeks,” in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, John W. Stanley (trans.), Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, p. 145.
See Marion, God without Being, pp. 29ff.
Gadamer, “Philosophy and Literature,” Anthony J. Steinbock, trans., in Man and World: International Philosophical Review, Vol. 18 (1985), p. 248.
See Gadamer, “Wort und Bild-->so wahr, so seiend<,” p. 394. This marks a limit to traditional ontology that, Gadamer points out, holds for philosophy as well.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Truth of the Work of Art,” in Heidegger’s Ways, p. 104.
Gadamer, “Aesthetic and Religious Experience,” p. 145.
Gadamer, “Wort und Bild-->so wahr, so seiend<,” p. 395.
Ibid., p. 389.
Gadamer, “Praise of Theory,” in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Praise of Theory: Speeches and Essays, Chris Dawson (trans.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, p. 31.
Fragment 15, Rose, quoted in this connection in Gerhard Krüger, Einsicht und Leidenschaft: Das Wesen des platonischen Denkens, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1939, p. 61.
Gadamer, “Zur Phänomenologie von Rituel und Sprache,” p. 414.
Gadamer, “Hölderlin and George,” p., 103.
Carl Kerényi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, Ralph Manheim (trans.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 101.
Gadamer, “Zur Phänomenologie von Rituel und Sprache,” p. 415.
Gadamer, “Under the Shadow of Nihilism,” in Hans-Georg Gadamer on Education,Poetry, and History, p. 114.
See Gadamer, “Zur Phänomenologie von Rituel und Sprache,” pp. 409 ff. For discussion of this distinction, see Richard E. Palmer, “Gadamer’s Recent Work of Language and Philosophy: On ‘Zur Phänomenologie von Ritual und Sprache’,” Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 33, No. 3 (July 2000), pp. 385 ff.
Gadamer, “Zur Phänomenologie von Rituel und Sprache,” p. 416.
Ibid., p. 415.
See Gadamer, The Idea of the Good, pp. 59–60
Gadamer, “Socrates Frömmigkeit des Nichtwissens,” p. 87.
Gadamer, The Idea of the Good, p. 41.
Jacques Derrida, “Response to Keamey,”: in God, the Gift,and Postmodernism, pp. 133–34.
Gadamer, “Zur Phänomenologie von Rituel und Sprache,” p. 432.
See Ibid., p. 430 and p. 436.
See Gadamer, “Intuition and Vividness,” in The Relevance of the Beautiful, p. 170.
See discussion in John D. Caputo, “Apostles of the Impossible: On God and the Gift in Derrida and Marion,” in God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, p. 206.
Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoélogie française, p. 31.
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Lammi, W. (2003). Gadamer and the Cultic. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming. Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialogue, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0229-4_12
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